An interesting press release dropped in the inbox this morning. Not particularly relevant to the wine industry, but definitely connected because of corks. Michigan artist Scott Gunderson assembles intricate portraits by using the varying shades of the ends of hundreds of the wine closures.

We're starting work on our upcoming July edition that will feature several articles on the use of barrels and oak in winemaking. Several of these reports came out of our third annual oak conference that took place in March in Santa Rosa, Calif. The conference included a session on effective cellar management and one of the panelists was Mike Blom who spoke at length about seismic safety. There wasn't enough room in the magazine for a feature on that session but we did want to report on Blom's unique perspective on the issue.

Nearly three years since the 2014 South Napa earthquake toppled barrel stacks at several wineries and hit his barrel storage facility particularly hard, Blom says many in the industry don’t seem to have learned from what he and others experienced.

In early May, I met up with Marc Mondavi for breakfast in Calistoga. Mondavi is part owner of CK Mondavi and the son of the late Peter Mondavi. He was on a press push because the family’s national brand has undergone a packaging redesign.

Last year the Denver, Colo., based wine company Integrated Beverage Group (IBG) made headlines with its line of Replica wines. The company touts its “cutting edge scientific methodology” to analyze the taste and aroma profiles of popular brands (perhaps gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and tannin/phenolic analysis?) and produce wines that taste similar but cost far less.